I bave already sent off this little book to Lady Johnes, and I beg you to get it from her and read it with all speed. It is, perhaps, the most perfect bijou our time and country has produced.--It appears to me to bear to the prose of our day pretty much the same relation the poetry of Rogers does to our popular poetry. It displays a profound elegance of thought and language--a pure, playful, inoffensive wit-and a most thrilling and poetic tenderness of feeling, such as have very rarely been united in any work of any country, and such as I run no risk in saying were never before displayed in union in the work of a man not so much above twenty years of age.

Since his little book was published, however, M. de Peudemots (to judge from the writings, which the inimitable purity of style shows very plainly to be his,) has not a little enlarged his views in regard to men, and manners, and philosophy-and, I doubt not, he will soon show this eulargement in some very splendid way. By what process of circumstances such a mind as his is, should have been formed and nurtured into its present condition, in the midst of the superficial talkers and debaters of Edinburgh, I am greatly at a loss to imagine. It must, indeed, have been a very noble armour of innate strength, which has enabled him to resist so much of precept and example-and, in spite of all that was passing around him, to train himself, from his earliest years, in so sure a reliance upon the finer examples and higher precepts of the old times of England. It is easy to see much of bis inward strength beaming through the modesty of his physiognomy-and in his organization upwards, it is still more easy to detect the marks of a commanding intellect. He has a high pale forehead, the pure intellectual conformation of which is sufficient to render it perfectly beautiful. So much for one whose name will not long be an obscure one.

I was introduced also to a third of these youthful coadjutors, in the person of a Captain H, a very fine-looking young officer, whom the peace has left at liberty to amuse himself in a more pleasant way than he was accustomed to, so long as Lord Wellington kept the field. He has a noble Spaniard-looking head, and a tall, graceful person, which he swings about in a style of knowingness that might pass muster even in the eye of Old Potts. The expression of bis features is so very sombre, that I should never have guessed him to be a playful writer, (indeed, how should I have guessed such a person to be a writer at all?) Yet such

is the case--for, unless I am totally misinformed, he is the author of a thousand beautiful jeux d'esprit, both in prose and verse, which I shall point out to you more particularly when

we meet.

In the conversation of this large party, and over the prime Chateau Margout of Mr. Gillies, the time past most agreeably till ten o'clock, at which hour we transferred ourselves to the drawing-room, and began dancing reels in a most clamorous and joyous manner, to the music, sometimes of the Shepherd's fiddle-sometimes of the harpsichord. On these latter occasions, the Shepherd himself mingled in the maze with the best of us, and, indeed, displayed no insignificant remains of that light-heeled vigour, which enabled bim in his youth (ere yet he had found nobler means of distinction,) to bear the bell on all occasions from the runners and leapers of Ettrick-dale. The great beauty of this man's deportment, to my mind, lies in the unaffected simplicity with which he retains, in many respects, the external manners and appearance of his original station-blending all, however, with a softness and manly courtesy, derived, perhaps, in the main, rather from the natural delicacy of his mind and temperament, than from the influence of any thing he has learned by mixing more largely in the world. He is truly a most interesting person-his conversation is quite picturesque and characteristic, both in its subjects and its expression--bis good humour is unalterable, and bis discernment most acute-and he bears himself with a happy mixture of modesty and confidence, such as well becomes a man of genius, who has been born and bred in poverty, and who is still far from being rich, but who has forfeited, at no moment of his career, his claim to the noble consciousness of perfect independence.

A merry supper, followed by a variety of songs and stories, detained us at Lasswade till a late, or rather till an early hour; but the moon bad arisen in all her brightness, and our drive to Edinburgh was a cooling and calm termination to all the bilarities of the evening.

This morning I spent almost entirely in driving from one house to another, bidding adieu, for a few months, to such of my Edinburgh friends as are still in town. This would, indeed, have been a sad duty, but for the prospect of meeting them all again after my return from the ulterior part of my pilgrimage. In the mean time, however, it is a real sorrow for me to part, even with that consolation in view, for so

long a time from my excellent old friend, Mr. W—. His kindness has really been such as I can never repay-not even in gratitude. Ever since I came, he seems to have made me, my comfort, and convenience, and gratification, the sole subject of his concern. I trust I shall be able to induce him to give me, so far, my revenge, next summer, in Cardigan-but, alas! what can I show him there like much of what he has shown me in Edinburgh?

My time, however, presses, and I cannot possibly delay setting off for Glasgow any longer. I propose spending a week in and about that city, to several of the most respectable inhabitants of which I have received letters of introduction, through the kindness of my indefatigable friend. To-day W dines with me, once more solus cum solo, at my botel--and with to-morrow's dawn I must gird myself for my journey. I shall write to you shortly after my arri val; but, in the mean time, in case you should write to me, address your letters to the Buck's-Head Hotel, Glasgow. Ever yours,

P.M.

P. S. Don't forget to borrow M. de Peudemot's book from my aunt. If you don't get the "One Night in Rome" by heart, I shall lose all faith in your taste.

LETTER LXV.

TO THE SAME.

Buck's-Head, Glasgow.

I HAD a melancholy ride from Edinburgh-as every man of any sense or feeling must have who quits that beautiful and hospitable city, after a residence half so long as mine. When I bad swallowed my solitary cup of coffee and bit of toast, and, wrapping myself in my great-coat, proceeded to the door of Oman's--and saw there the patient Scrub, the lazy John, and the sober shandrydan, all prepared for the journey, -I could not but feel a chilness creep over me at the now visible and tangible approach of my departure. I mounted, however, and seized the reins with a firniness worthy of myself, and soon found myself beyond sight of the obsequious bowings of Mr. Oman and his lackeys-driving at a smart resolute pace along the glorious line of Prince's-Street,

which I bad so often traversed on different errands, and in such different glee. There was a thick close mist, so that I scarcely saw more than a glimpse or two of some fragments of the Castle as I past-the church-domes and towers floated here and there like unsupported things in the heavens ;-and Edinburgh, upon the whole, seemed to melt from before my retreating gaze, "like the baseless fabric of a vision." It was not till I had got fairly out of the town, that the sun shone forth in his full splendour, gilding with his Judas beams the dead white masses of vapour that covered the ground before me-and, by degrees, affording me wider and richer glances of the whole of that variously magnificent champaign.

There is, indeed, a very fine tract of country, stretching for several miles westward from Edinburgh-its bosom richly cultivated and wooded, and its margin on either hand skirted by very picturesque, if not very majestic, ranges of mountains. After passing over these beautiful miles, however, the general character of the road to Glasgow is extremely monotonous and uninteresting-there being neither any level sufficient to give the impression of extent, or height sufficient to dignify the scene-but one unbroken series of bare bleak table-land, almost alike desolate-looking where cultivation has been commenced, as where the repose of the aboriginal heather has been left undisturbed. About the conclusion of the third long stage, which brings you within some fifteen or sixteen miles of Glasgow, the country does indeed rise high enough-but I never saw any high country so very dull. The Kirk of Shotts, from which the most dreary ridge takes its name, is situated certainly in one of the last of all places that a member of the old Melrose and Dryburgh school would have thought of for an ecclesiastical building. Yet it is pleasing to see such a building in such a place—and the little dove-cote belfry rises with peculiar expressiveness amidst a land of so little promise. When we had passed the Kirk of Shotts, we gradually descended, and saw from the warmer slopes upon which we travelled, occasional peeps of the rich valley of the Clyde, smiling serenely with all its pomp of woods and waters to the left. The road, however, soon became quite flat again, and excepting one or two little glens close by the way-side, I observed nothing particularly interesting till we came within sight of the city.

The city is (even after Edinburgh) a very fine one. It has no pretensions to any such general majesty of situation as the metropolis-it has nothing that can sustain any com

parison with the Rock and the Castle-to say nothing of the hills and the sea-yet it is a grand and impressive city, whether we look at its situation or at its buildings. The Cathedral, in the immediate neighbourhood of which the oldest part of the town stands, is placed on the brink of a commanding eminence, from which there is a continued descent of more than a mile southward to the river-all the intervening space baving been long since covered with streets, and squares, and market-places, by the sons of traffick. The Old Church is at the eastern extremity also of the townwhich now seems to be running, after the fashion of the fine people in London, entirely to the west. The main street, through which I made my entrance, the Trongate, is a prodigiously fine thing-one of the very finest things, I venture to say, in all Europe-consisting, for the most part, of huge black structures, rising on either side many stories into the air, but diversified, all along, with very picturesque breaks and lights-pillars, turrets, spires, every thing, in a word, that can give the grandeur of variety to a long street cutting the centre of a great city. From this, various minor streets, old and new, sombre and gay, penetrate into the extremities of the peopled place. There is a vast hum, and bustle, and jostling, all along-things of which one meets with very little in Edinburgh; and, indeed, the general air of activity is only second to that of Cheapside. I felt at once that I had got into a very different sort of place from that I had left; but both 1 and my horse were somewhat wearied with the journey, and the horns of a genuine Buck, proudly projected over the gateway of the hotel to which I had been directed, were to me the most interesting features in the whole Trongate of Glasgow. I am now established in a very snug suite of apartments, from which I command, in the mean time, a view of the whole of this great street, and from which, God willing, I shall go forth to-morrow, refreshed and reinvigora ted by a good supper and a good sleep, to examine and critieise Glasgow and its inhabitants.

I told you that I had received, before leaving Edinburgh, various letters of introduction to gentlemen of this place: and I was preparing to set about delivering some of them this morning, immediately after breakfast, when one of the